Monday, October 31, 2011

This episode of Dwarf Lover, Ineption, was conceived and planned out long before I ever saw that South Park episode with Inception and Freddy Krueger. But I guess that's what happens when you take six years to finish a story arc and other writers finish a story every week of their stupid lives! Of course the story didn't have the inception bit when it was first planned. But I thought the spinning top was a nice way to introduce the dream aspect.

One of the things that fit so nicely when I brought Freddy Krueger into the story way back in The Journal of Kohk Korunch was that I knew there was a section in the Tomb much later where the party would be forced into a sleeping state. And that Freddy would be dealt with at that time.

Of course, he's only sort of half dealt with after this episode.

By the way, this is the first big encounter with one of the 13 Ghosts of the Chest of S'kubi Du! So anybody out there trying to guess who all 13 Ghosts are, well, um, now you only have to guess 12! Or 11 since you can be pretty sure Acererak is one of them also.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

As I play these old graphic adventure games, I'm trying to learn something from each one that might help me along in the next. So these are a few things the games I've played have taught me.

1. Alien Research Center: A relatively simple game which I thought I was going to win on my first attempt. Getting from beginning to end was fairly simple although one exit from one room remained blocked to me. After realizing I still had more things to find, I attempted to pass the pool blocking my way with no luck. It turned out there was a half-corroded floor in one room that you needed to kick to open up more of the ship. Thing I learned: When a Wall, Floor, or Ceiling has a special note, mark it for later. You may have to try a whole bunch of verbs useless in the rest of the game on the wall or floor or ceiling to continue on your quest.

2. Master of the Universe in Terraquake (unless it's really Super Adventure!): This game had a lot of Red Herrings which made me waste a lot of time. But it is possible to realize specific areas of a map that you don't need to fiddle with. But Terraquake's Red Herrings were mainly there to distract the player from the dead end under Snake Mountain with a wall that didn't have anything interesting about it at all. Of course, that was where a secret door was! Thing I learned: When a Wall, Floor, or Ceiling has no special note, you're fucked. You may have to try examining every wall and floor and ceiling in every location until you find one that says more than "Looks like an ordinary wall to me."

3. Frankie Crashed on Jupiter: Saying Fuck replaced the Drop All command in this game. But it did so by moving your entire inventory into the room you are currently in. This had the advantage of things that would normally break when you dropped them individually to not break! Very handy, indeed. Thing I learned: Saying Fuck can be very useful.

4. The Very Big Cave Adventure: If you say Fuck in this game, the female narrator breaks your arm and ends your game. But if you say Shit, you are transported to the Swear Box where you must Wash Mouth to leave. When you leave, you end up near the Wellie House where your treasure is stored. This can be very useful when you don't want to cross the entire cave to put some treasure away. But what is more, one of the major puzzles in the game (possibly the only real puzzle in the game!) can be avoided by swearing! In Gotham, you have to steal two treasures while That Man is in the bathroom. But you just don't have enough time! But you can steal both treasures and swear before going back to the heart of Gotham! You still need to get a ride back from That Man if you want his utility belt. But that's no problem! If you head back to Gotham, everything is reset! You can help That Man foil the Jester again and this time just hang out until That Man is done in the can. Game Won! Things I learned: When programmers try to get cute, they often fuck up the shit in their game.

5. Aztec Tomb Revisited: This game was a big fat programming turd. How it ever made it onto shelves is a mystery. But the worst part of the game is that the instructions outright lie to you. They tell you to look at rooms and examine things. But early on, you need to look at things while examine does nothing. Oh, what a clever ploy! Fuck you, Brandon James. I will never forget your name, Brandon James. Things I learned: Brandon James is a dick who can't program worth shit.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Those must have been some really heady times, those halcyon days of the eighties. When you could write an adventure game and it would be published no matter how poorly thought out it was. Where people were in such need of computer entertainment that they would shell out 8 Pounds for a less than funny parody of the Grandfather of all text games.

Oh, to be a kid back then! When you could write a game where all of the action took place on the surface of Jupiter and nobody seemed to care. When you could insult the player constantly because they can't quite guess the verb to solve the nonsensical puzzle you placed in the first few moves of a game to make the game seem to last longer. When mazes were standard fare and the only thing standing in the way of someone figuring out all of your puzzles in a couple of hours.

"See, what I did here, was I made most of the map available. And you can see there are six main puzzles that the player needs to solve to move on. But! The player can't solve any of these puzzles until he finds all the correct items at the end of this dastardly maze I made where no direction ever takes you to the same place twice and there is only a 1 in 100 chance of finding the correct route!"

Oh, such beauty! Such innocence! No wonder I long to go back and replay all of these horrible, horrible games! Their allure is just too, too sweet.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Places & Predators is the name of my website. I thought maybe I would list updates here with some notes on each project. I'm hoping that Blogger has better spam protection than the P&P Forum I'm currently using. Registration for the forum now needs authentication by me since at least one spammer per day was logging on. Usually, the same spammer but with a different name. He kept using a yahoo.uk email address and tacking two random capital letters onto he end of all of his random names.